Real Talk By: The Wizard

If you ever sit around thinking to yourself “Man, I wish there was a game where I could build a massive army on a map with thousands of other real players, set my alarm for 4am to destroy my neighbor, and then laugh during my daily cup of coffee in the morning while I read the hate mail he sent me” then you might be interested in Valor for Android and iOS operating systems.

Valor is a game designed by Playmesh that is basically a game where you own a city, build it from the ground up improving resource and troop rate production, and use resources like clay, wood, and iron to build a massive army. You can go a defensive route (the boring route), where you only make defense troops in case real players try to attack or conquer your city. Or you can go the offensive route where you attack real players to steal their hard-earned resources, or conquer their village for your own. That is basically the brief summary of the game, improve your resource production, use those resources to build an army, attack everyone weaker than you to loot and or pillage, or conquer them.

Everything is in real-time in Valor, while you sleep people can attack you, the server never stops until it ends for good. Which means before venturing into this game keep in mind you might rest uneasy some nights. Also keep in mind this is not a game that relies on graphics to get you hooked. So don’t expect fancy visuals. The way games like this hook you is in the relationships and guilds you form with other players, as there are around 21,000 players per server things can get heated amongst guilds, or even within guilds. You simply play this game to get big fast, and remain the biggest without losing your cities to other players. That being said this review will be a little different. I won’t be accounting into my score the graphics, or music for that matter, as there is only one music track and honestly the game doesn’t even need it. This review will focus more on the mechanics of the game, and could probably serve as a good starting point for new players.

Like I said above relationships with players is why you get hooked on this game. You have to make friends to survive. You need a guild for forming attacks on enemy players, and for defense if you think someone might try to take your village. People who play this game get pretty serious with these guilds. As the game is all mobile most guilds use Kakao chat app and open guild rooms for the guilds to chat among themselves, and plot the evil doings. You will quickly realize you have to destroy all your neighbors, or befriend them and work as a team, as having a friend with thousands of defensive troops 7 minutes away helps you sleep just a bit easier at night. You can also send in-game messages to any player you wish, such as if someone is attacking you, or a friendly hello, to see if their active so you know their city is easy pickings for raiding. Or what the players in these city building games normally refer to as farms. The game is all based on a rankings system. You can view the largest players and guilds, and the people with the highest offensive and defender kill scores. Which is also a good way to find out who to keep an eye on, and who to raid, or not. As you will need to raid and conquer other players cities to grow.

There are 9 different troop types in Valor. You have Beserkers who are you offensive infantry, Knights who are you offensive Calvary, Guardian who are you defensive Calvary, Lancers who are your defensive anti-Calvary units, Sentrys who are your defensive anti infantry unit, Scouts, who you can send to other villages to spy on their troop amounts, resources, and level of buildings in their city. Scouts can also be stationed in your city to defend against enemy scout attacks so they receive no information. Scouts are invaluable and mandatory for offensive and defensive players. You have Rams who simply destroy city walls to lower enemies in city troop defense and help you get an attack through. There are Ballistas which are catapults you can use to destroy buildings in enemy players cities. For example some guy raided you whilst you slept and now you need to destroy his farm so his troops starve. And finally you have the most important troop of all, the Scholar. Every city starts with 100 loyalty points. If you send a scholar and successfully attack without losing him you lower that cities loyalty. If the loyalty goes below zero you take control of that city. You have to decide early game whether to go the offensive of defensive route as a mixed pool of troops isn’t very effective. So you may have city 1 as offensive, and cities 2 and 3 as defensive cities to support your offense, but you must stick with purely offense or defense per city if you want to survive! You can also make scout cities so you know you always have enough scouts to get a report if needed. Knowing what types of troops to build is important because if you have 5000 defensive troops and 5000 offensive troops some guy with 10,000 offense will wipe you out, or some guy with 10,000 defense won’t be an option to raid as you will only have a small attack force. So pick a troop type and stick with it! Solely offense or defense with some scouts and either rams, or ballistas. I prefer rams as they are good for raiding with their wall destroy ability that helps keep troop deaths down. Most players do prefer ballistas though as they can destroy walls and buildings in player cities. Also ballistas take so much more food to feed, thus leaving less room for troops, and also it takes at least twice as many ballistas to destroy a wall then it does for rams. So keep that in mind before choosing which to make.

That’s really all to say about Valor, it’s simple and addictive. You simply buld a city, amass an army, and try to destroy and conquer other players, all while trying to make some trusted friends along the way. You have to watch out for spies who try to infiltrate your guilds chat rooms also. You can’t trust anyone in Valor! They will join your guild for the sole purpose of getting information on attacks, and troops players have. This happens every server I play on. The only real gripe I have about valor is that customer support is awful. Anytime you have to make a ticket for an issue it takes at least a week. It’s also worth noting Valor is free! There are similar games to Valor on Android, but they will suck your money away. At no point in Valor do I feel like i’m being pestered like a bum looking for a 40oz of King Cobra on the streets. You can play Valor free without any real penalty as long as you check in a few times a day to cue up building construction. I will advise spending a few dollars and at least purchasing the extra cue slots for the first few weeks as it does help. Seeing how the game is free a few dollars every few weeks isn’t a big deal to help support the game. Hopefully if you like this review i’ll see you on an Android server! You can hit me up here and I can send you my in-game info. Go Forth and Conquer!!!

Valor Gets

Out of Five

What’s legit?

+Online interactions

+It’s Free

Making people mad is fun!

What’s Perpetrating?

-Customer support: and on android you will need it as there are issues from time to time.

-Gold is expensive, but luckily not mandatory to be good.

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